While subscriptions are financially critical, Tom Betts at the FT uses engagement as a success metric because “it aligns everyone in the company to all pull in the same direction. The marketing team is driven to support the newsroom and, at the same time, support their own targets.”

Smart, because not everybody is interested in financials. Everybody is interested in increased readership.

Betts also points out that “an analytically mature business is where the vast majority of analysts sit within the other teams,” Tech organizations, he added, “don’t have chief data officers.”

Good overview on messagings apps for customer service. Human interactions on messaging apps enable a qualitatively different customer experience that speaks to consumers’ desire for authentic, one-to-one relationships. Wow. This will grow fast!

Some are seeing early signs that the value of a mobile user is greater than a desktop user.
After Facebook’s latest blockbuster earnings report, Ben Evans crunched the data and discovered the company’s shift from desktop to mobile has led to much higher engagement and average revenue per user.

Global paper production is in fact going down. Because of the growth of digital, one might conclude. This slowing demand, together with low energy prices, gave newspapers all over the world a lucky break in their financials in the past years, as paper prices were truly low. By the way, this chart is without newsprint. But we all know that stagnated.

Meanwhile in Germany, newspapers are negotiating and negotiating because some paper producers are said to have introduced interim prices that include a substantial mark-up. And the news guys expected lower mark-ups, not accepting - or not realising - the effect on the price of smaller capacities of the paper mills. First there was less demand with too much supply (low price). Now it is turning into a game of less supply and higher prices due to smaller economies of scale at the mills. I fear for the ebitda of newsprinters in the coming years.

Despite all the digitalisation, the Guardian’s really bad financials are blowing up the dream of free information, unlimited audiences and a sustaining new business model built exclusively on advertising. Cost cutting is on its way. How they ever could have chosen to put all their eggs in one basket, I don’t know.

Contrary to the Guardian, the paywalled New York Times reports a strong fourth quarter with 52 million dollars in earnings, buoyed by strong digital growth and cost savings. This result means an increase of 48 percent in earnings compared with the same period in 2014.

Absolute Radio has an online registration process in which listeners who provide extra information like age, gender, email and location are given access to a wider range of content. They are served half the ads. The additional audience data has also gone toward providing better targeting for advertisers.